PentecostActs 2.1-21; John 20:19-23

Let the Spirit blossom!

[This is a much more conventional sermon than the earlier example. It tries to keep very close to the Bible texts and to be conversational in tone.]

How do you receive the Holy Spirit? Is it a dramatic and sensational happening? [A WOW factor way beyond Britain’s Got Talent] Is it a reasoned account of things you’ve known about but have never connected before? [The good teacher who lets you in on something: ‘I’d never realised before’] Or is it deeply felt experience that comes on you quietly: so hard to share yet you feel you must? [‘I knew peace I’d never known before. It had been all tears and anguish, but now things are different ....’ How do you receive the Holy Spirit?

The Galileans are making a commotion. I imagine they’ve left the house because the commotion draws a crowd. It’s as if they’ve become barkers – you know those fellahs who shout out their sales pitches at a fair. ‘You’ll be amazed. I’m going to show you that this little gadget won’t only do twelve jobs in your kitchen; it’ll do twenty-four. What’s this? It’s just a carrot, you say, but keep watching; with the Acme miracle multipurpose cutting and shaping tool it will become an orange Chrysanthemum, the perfect and oh so impressive garnish to any salad. And not only that ...’

And so the barker goes on into his pitch. This fellah’s got talent. The crowd increasing all the time–though some slope off. The Barker works hard to win people to his product, but not everyone is convinced. Some are amazed, and some sneer, just as they did on that first Pentecost when the Galileans barked out their insistent witness to God’s deeds of power. How do you receive the Holy Spirit? Some are swept along by it. They know it; they experience it; they engulfed by it.

At Pentecost amazement and astonishment was there alright, but so was bewilderment and perplexity. The gift of the Spirit doesn’t carry all before it. The significance of the event, the goodness of the message, isn’t apparent to everyone in the crowd. The power of the Spirit doesn’t overturn human motivation and human scepticism. There’s spectacle here, there’s power that carries some with it, but not all. A human voice is still needed and Peter provides the words – but that’s to get ahead of ourselves. Let’s stay with the crowd.

And what a crowd it is! This is a mixture of people as diverse as any resort Thomson holidays might take you to: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, folks from Crete and from Arabia. Can’t you hear whatever the first-century equivalents were of: ‘Who’s grabbed all the sunbeds?’ ‘Listen to them, you always know who’s going to be noisiest in the pool.’ ‘How do they have the courage to strip off like that?’ It looks like a holiday, a festival crowd. But it isn’t!

Judeans, Egyptians, Cyrenians, Libyans, Romans – Meads? There haven’t been any Meads for hundreds of years. And as for Elamites; they’re as rare as hen’s teeth. It’s as if the passage said French, English, Americans, Aztecs, Russians, Iceni, Eburones and other ancient Celts, Auzzies, Kenyans and visitors from Atlantis! It’s a list that represents all people of all time, and not just those who are literally there to hear the apostles. It’s not just those who are caught up in the moment. How do you receive the Holy Spirit?

The events of Pentecost are for and to the whole inhabitants of this world in all time. This Spirit is the outworking, the gifting, of God in all times and places. The Spirit’s resting isn’t constrained by any human limitation. Remember the word from Jesus at the Ascension: ‘You will be my witnesses … to the ends of the earth.’ We are included in that. The Spirit rest on us now.

Do you remember the anxiety that could go with?

One potato Two potatoes Three potatoes Four!

Five potatoes Six potatoes Seven potatoes More!

Will I be chosen or will I not? The only thing worse was the simple picking of sides when the leader just pointed at the ones he wanted. Oh, the dread of being left there, unchosen.

But that’s not God’s way. The praise of God and the declaration of his deeds are heard by all in their own native language. It’s not that some hear it as authentically their own and others don’t. The Spirit speaks to the heart and soul of everyone with equal grace and equal vigour. His choice is of a different order altogether from our choosing. He chooses that each and all shall hear the Spirit’s promptings. Diversity, difference, particularity, and specificity are all affirmed. Cultural difference is part of our very humanity and God rejoices in it. His Spirit is not confined within our cultural categories, our culturally determined understandings, but these things are part of what it is to be human, and God wants us to be human. The question ‘How do you receive the Holy Spirit?’ becomes ‘Why don’t you receive the Spirit God offers you?’

So when Peter gets to his interpretation, his explanation of what’s going on in this amazing spectacle, it’s not the apostles or the crowd that is his focus, but the majesty of God. The unifying factor isn’t what people are doing, what people are saying, what they are achieving, no, this is ‘the Lord’s great and glorious day.’ He it is who pours out his Spirit on all flesh. This is God’s doing; that’s the unifying factor. Peter sees it and Peter declares it, so that those who can’t understand what’s going might come to know it for themselves.

Those who sneered accused the apostles of being filled with new wine. New wine, now that’s a thought! I’ve only once drunk Neuer Wein or Federweisser, and it very yeasty, uncommonly fizzy, or perhaps lively is a better word. It’s refreshingly easy drinking so the temptation is to drink it like soda pop. And that’s its problem, the effects are instant and multiple – drunk and full of wind! Not necessarily pleasant, especially to those looking on. So the sneer has with it more than scepticism, and it isn’t the wind of the Spirit that appals them!

The coming Reign of God is breaking in to the here and now, but some people mistake it for disreputable behaviour. This can’t be holy they think, even if they don’t actually say it. Peter tries to convince them otherwise. Why don’t you receive the Spirit God offers you? Look up, listen up, you see the day of God’s completion of all things glimpsed in this amazing happening.

But read on, even though Peter speaks out now we come to learn that it took even him a good while to realise the full significance of Pentecost. He has yet to appreciate that all flesh really means all flesh and not just the people of scattered Jewish communities. All flesh means all the inhabitants of the world. Why don’t you receive the Spirit God offers you?

Peter had been there on that evening behind locked doors. The resurrected body of Jesus still bore the scars of torture and death but the peace of a new; a death-refusing reality breathed new life into them. Jesus’ peace shall be their peace. He binds them together in this. No dramatic spectacle, but the assurance of a peace that can’t be destroyed. ‘You be my body,’ he says. ‘You’ll bear the scars too, but I am the one who sends you, just as the Father sent me. So be certain that nothing that scars you will destroy the peace you know in me. Go and love as I love. Don’t let the fear of scars and death ever stop you. Receive the Holy Spirit.’

‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ How do you receive the Holy Spirit? Repent and believe: as simple and as hard as that. Why don’t you receive the Spirit God offers you?

Miss Ev left her island home for many months each year. A ferry to Florida and then the long rail journey to New York – though she was never able to book a comfort compartment like the others. Blacks didn’t travel in comfort in those days. And once in New York she had to keep in her place – black casual domestic workers the lowest of the low. How many seasons of labour did it take her to accumulate enough money to buy her little tin bungalow back home. I don’t know, but it was many, and how she missed her family and home during those months of exile and toil. In her Caribbean retirement years she liked to sit on the stoop of her bungalow, amongst the blossoms and the humming birds and watch the children sing their way to school.

Visitors came to her church from Britain. They were strangers, she didn’t know them. They were robbed at gun point. Shaken up missing all their cash they felt unsafe. So Miss Ev took them in, and had herself to sleep in the tool shed, and she made of her tiny bungalow a haven of care better than any five star Hilton Hotel. Her blacks hands laboured until their whites hands lost the shakes produced by fear and threat.

How do you receive the Holy Spirit? You receive the Spirit by living the life of Jesus. In ways quiet or loud, in spectacle or in ordinary things that go unnoticed, by thinking it through or by simply doing what comes to a conscience formed by Christ. Live the peace of Jesus and never let the scars of sin and hurt stop you. Resentment, hate, prejudice and harm shall never have the last say. You’ll see it, as I saw it in the care and love Miss Ev gave to me. You’ll see it in a million and one ways if you receive the Spirit God gives. Peace be with you.